People love Nichia’s because of the tint and color reproduction (CRI). Depending on your eyes, the difference between a Nicha and a low-CRI cree could be very dramatic, or not so much. Personally I really like the light a Nichia produces, but I only have one of them because efficiency is more important to me.
The 219b is newer, and a significant increase in output over the 219a.
I just got two of these triples myself, and will be working on putting some lights together to see exactly what the deal is. One's gonna be a triple in a Convoy S2, I'll use the others to make a P60 and whatever else I feel like.
Gonna try the Nichia Kool-Aid and see how it tastes!
Okay; I have to say, it's easy to see the allure of the high-CRI Nichia emitter output. So I built up my first Nichia light last night, and saw my first High-CRI Nichia illumination ever. The light is the Convoy S2 I built up using the KD 219b triple and optic combo I linked above. I'll try to put together another thread with the details of the build shortly.
I was very pleased with the output on this light. Although mildly driven at only 2.8A, I got a very floody light with a great tint. I'm comparing against my previous best CRI light, an old warm-white XR-E emitter in a P60 drop-in. I don't know the CRI of that old emitter, but it was fairly good at rendering color, so I've used it when grilling as it gave me a better representation of the food. Both the XR-E, and other warm/warmish XM-L emitters I've used though always had a very yellow tint (I had some of these Pee-Water yellow emitters: https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/30106). I didn't mind the warmness of the XR-E much, but never did like the pee-yellow tint of the XM-L2.
These Nichia emitters have a great tint, that I would call a true "Neutral" which has no yellow, blue, green, or other oddball hues like I've seen in Cree emitters. It's just what I would call a "White" light. Colors are much more vivid when viewed using this light, but they are naturally so, and completely across the spectrum. None of the colors "jump out" more than others; they are all just rich and fully saturated.
I compared this light against one of my other favorites, a similarly floody light using a Cool-White XM-L U2 emitter. Although the CW tint usually doesn't bother me, this light makes the difference quite drastic. When alternating between the Nichia and the Cree, the Cree tint becomes an obnoxious blue that you don't really notice when your eyes are accustomed to it.
I am not a tint snob, and have always been partial to the brightness of a cool-white emitter. I'm curious what these emitters will mean for my other flashlights as I start using them more often. I have three spare emitters now as I ordered a second triple to cannibalize the emitters for other projects. I was already planning on building up a 2x AA light from an eBay host using one of these for my father who works in networking and needs the CRI for identifying color codes on cabling. I'll also build up a P60 host for this myself, and probably a single-AA sized EDC pocket light.
Coming soon: A "For Sale" thread titled "All of my poor CRI Cree lights" (Not likely at ALL). ;)
Thanks for the elaborate reply keltex78
I like how you refer the pee yellow question I asked a while ago XD
I believe in summary you would say it’s the cleanest most balanced white?
sounds very tempting as I’m waiting for my leds to arrive.
I gotta agree Cree is just weird for an led color. It may be bright but even my cheapo warm white 1w led gives a better color representation than my cree based lights. None of my cree are balanced colored. It’s either too blue, too purple or too uv mix pee yellow
I have to say my best LED I own right now comes from this so called LG cob LEDs as well as an osram emitter that isn’t golden dragon but looks like one.
I’m so looking forward to this nichia and see how pleasing they are.
Thanks for the extra poison in my blood haha
You may just have a bad sampling of CREE tints. Try a 3D bin if you have not already, it’s really nice.
Back to Nichia, just remember they have different tint and output bins too. My first one I bought from RMM and the tint and output are pretty awesome. Then I tried the triple from KD, and although they are definitely Nichia 219b’s, they are not nearly as nice as the one from RMM. They have a cool white rosiness that is hard to explain, and although they still represent colors well, the tint just isn’t pleasing to my eyes.
KD is always kind of a lottery. If it’s marked 219a, you just might get 219b’s, but no matter what you don’t know what bins you will get.
I’ll keep in mind for the 3D bin.
Maybe I’ll opt for an xpg2 for that color to replace my dying phosphor xpe in my high quality sipik clone (which I’m planning to put a warm XT-E Q5-7B)
Yes RMM is mtnelectronics. I believe he sources his Nichias from intl-outdoor, so that may be better for international shipping.
The 3D tint is very similar to the tint of a good Nichia. It doesn’t have the same color reproduction, but the beam color is very close. I believe an XP-L 3D is the best compromise between beautiful tint and high output.
I like Nichias. The CRI is nice, but the output really doesn’t hold a candle to the latest CREEs.
It often comes down to a choice of better CRI or massively higher output. Better CRI is barely noticeable especially when compared to the better CREE tints (3D and 4D). On the other hand massively higher output from the CREE LEDs is immediately noticeable and usually much more useful.
The current Cree led's do provide a lot more output, which would explain why they're more popular in flashlights. Not everybody cares about the high-CRI and color reproduction of the Nichias you're referring to (they also make "normal CRI" variants with higher output).
That said, there are quite a few people who prefer Nichia when max lumens isn't a top priority. I generally don't need much more than about 300-400 lumens, so I may be in the minority on BLF.
If you don’t have any you should try them out for yourself since recomendations are subjective. Despite the lowered output it’s nice to have the added reds in dive lights. I have yet to just use an additional red led to do this.
I don’t know anything about dive lights, but I have a triple with 2 dedomed 1A XP-L’s and a deep red XP-E. It brings out the reds, oranges, and browns quite nicely, but compared to a Nichia the greens and blues suffer, and it doesn’t mix well at close range.
Red light doesn’t penetrate very far below the surface. I’ve seen expensive lights with a red cree added to fill in the spectrum but I wonder how 3 R5 1D’s + 1 red would look compared to 4 219 B’s.
